A Company That's Showing the Money!

Kudos to Whole Foods for paying its employees more than it has to.  While other retailers, such as Walmart, pay their employees an average of $12 per hour, Whole Foods pays their employees an average of $15 per hour (a whopping 25% more!).  In addition, Whole Foods offers the majority of their employees benefits and stock options.  Whole Foods co-CEO Walter Robb says he wishes the company could pay them even more.  While the annual wage still equates to a modest amount around $31K, fundamentally, it's a huge step forward for American workers.

The Yahoo Finance blog summarizes it well:

“Specifically, Whole Foods is trying to practice a philosophy it calls "conscious capitalism" in which the interests of three different groups of "stakeholders" in a company are balanced: shareholders, customers, and employees. In many companies, the emphasis is almost entirely on the interests of shareholders and customers, with employees viewed as a "production cost." The problem with the latter philosophy is that, while it may produce short-term profit gains, it ultimately hurts the entire economy. This is because the most important customers in the economy, the hundreds of millions of mass-market consumers who work as employees, get starved of wages that would otherwise quickly be turned into purchasing power and, thereby, revenue for other companies.”

While employees at most companies get steamrolled when their interests are viewed as "production costs," it's good to see a company seeing the big picture importance of truly valuing their employees.  Instead of just giving it lip service, Whole Foods is putting their money where their mouth is.  And if you think this would hurt Whole Foods on Wall Street, think again.  Since 2009, Whole Foods' stock price has increased from around $10 to around $100!  In that same time frame, Walmart's stock price has only increased from about $50 to about $75.

*** UPDATE:  Whole Foods' other co-CEO, John Mackey says employees should come before investors.  This "conscious capitalism" approach is absolutely a breath of fresh air in corporate America.  Whole Foods' approach even includes a cap on executive pay at 19 times the company's average hourly wage!  Wow, I've never heard of a cap on executive pay until now.  This is even more impressive when you consider that the runaway train that is executive pay averages about 400 times the average worker.